Skip to main content
Home
  • The Legislative Assembly meets on 16/04/2024 (01:00 PM)
    Assembly sit 16/04/2024
  • The Legislative Council meets on 16/04/2024 (01:00 PM)
    Council sit 16/04/2024
  • The Public Administration meets on 08/04/2024 (10:00 AM)
    Committee meet 08/04/2024

Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 1156 asked in the Legislative Council on 21 October 2020 by Hon Robin Scott

Parliament: 40 Session: 1

SCHOOLS — ABORIGINAL STUDENTS — ATTENDANCE

1156. Hon ROBIN SCOTT to the Minister for Education and Training:

Publicly available data shows that there is little to no improvement in the school attendance rate of Aboriginal students in WA schools. Can the minister explain the government's failure to improve the school attendance rates of Aboriginal students?

Hon SUE ELLERY replied:

I thank the member for the question.

If the member would like to be briefed on the initiatives we are putting in place, particularly in the Kimberley, but also in a number of our remote schools, to address the longstanding and difficult issue of school attendance, particularly of Indigenous kids, I would be happy to provide him with that briefing. I will give him an example. Out of something as terrible as the coroner's report into suicides some amazing work has been done in Halls Creek. It is a fantastic initiative that effectively created a case management approach to identify the real reasons that those kids were not attending school and working with families to get them to attend. In addition to that, the Kimberley schools project was started under the previous government, which we have continued. It specifically tries to address issues of literacy and numeracy, but as a consequence of that, it is also having a really positive impact on attendance. To use the vernacular, these are wicked problems and they will not be resolved overnight, but there are some really good examples of where school communities are tackling those issues head-on, and I am happy to brief the member on those matters.